Steven Russell began his life as a normal family with children and his wife, Debbie, and a job in the police force. To the outside world, it appears that he and Debbie are very much in love with each other; with friends of the family clearly wincing uncomfortably when Steven and Debbie begin kissing in front of them. It soon becomes apparent that Steven is simply a cop to find his birth mother; he successfully manages to locate her; however, she subsequently rejects him which sets off a train of events in Steven’s life. Steven then proceeds to crash his car. He is seriously injured and as he is being taken away on a stretcher, he tells the paramedics that he is going to become openly homosexual and states that he is going to tell his wife. We then see Steven living the ‘high life’ with his new boyfried, Jimmy, of whom he showers with expensive gifts. Jimmy, however, clearly uncomfortable with this. Steven then decides that his job is inadequate to fund his newly found ‘expensive gay lifestyle’, so he declines into criminal activity and eventually is put into prison for insurance fraud – but not before he puts himself into hospital and tries to escape by jumping off the hospital roof; Jimmy then tells Steven he doesn’t want to see him again. Once in prison, Steven meets shy and quiet Phillip Morris in the Law library. He tells him he is a Lawyer and gives him ‘legal’ advice about his sick friend. They then begin corresponding via letters when Morris is transferred over to the Michael Wing until, eventually, Steven gets himself transferred over to that wing of the prison and into the same cell as Morris. They continue their relationship inside the prison, blissfully happy, until Steven is then transferred to a different prison and then is released into the community. He then fraudlently claims himself to be a Lawyer and manages to secure Morris’s early release. They then move in together. Morris asks Steven, thinking he is a Lawyer, to help his friend out with a legal case. He wins this case, and clearly feels so empowered he applies and successfully gets a job as the finance manager with a top firm. He then embezzles the company out of thousands of dollars and is only found out with a colleague of his is reading over the accounts and notices the deficiency. He then attempts to run away with Morris, but Morris declines to leave and drives away, leaving Steven to face his fate alone. Steven then does not see Morris again until the end of the film; however, he tries (and is successful) in escaping from the jail many times; by stealing green marker pens and dying his prison outfit green posing as a nurse and other various surprisingly simple schemes. He is, however, quickly recovered after these schemes and returned to prison. He then attempts one final scheme – he forgives medical documents in order to fool doctors into thinking he has aids and eventually fakes his own death. Morris is then informed by his cell mate that Russell has died; however, 5 minutes after he was told, he was taken to meet his ‘lawyer'(Russell, posing as a Lawyer) and slaps him after realising that Russell faked his own death to get out of prison. The film then ends when one of the directors of the company he embezzled thousands of dollars from bumps into him into the court toilet (where the director was a juror) and he is then arrested whilst he was trying to secure Morris’s release. He is then given an unprecedented jail sentence.